Say what you will about EA and Maxis' frustrating server issues or refund policies surrounding last week's botched SimCity launch, but the company has been working hard to communicate its efforts to fix the situation in recent days through Maxis General Manager Lucy Bradshaw.

In an update posted late Saturday to EA's official blog, Bradshaw said server response time has been improved 40-fold since launch. This allows for twice as many players to be in the game simultaneously (including "tens of thousands of new players... logging in every day"). She described the current situation as "good, but not good enough," and promised the team won't rest until they have "everyone online, playing together, and no hitches."

The Maxis team has added 12 new servers to the game since Thursday, including the pithily named "Antarctica 1" earlier this morning (servers are region-free, so this isn't as limited as it seems). Individual servers are still being taken down periodically to install patches that bring benefits like faster setup and traffic fixes.

Bradshaw also took to Twitter yesterday to address fans' concerns directly. Her answers included the first public indication that EA and Maxis may be considering loosening the game's always-online restrictions. Responding to a question about whether an offline mode patch would be distributed when servers were eventually taken down in a few years, or "perhaps before then," Bradshaw said that the company has "no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon, but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts." That said, Bradshaw later tweeted, "the game was designed for [multiplayer], we sim the entire region on the server, so [adding offline modes] is just not possible." Talk about muddying the message a little bit.

During the 45-minute online Q&A session, Bradshaw also directly addressed how the team could have underestimated their server needs so drastically. "Metrics/beta was fairly conservative and live ops stressed our game server DB’s in ways that we did not experience in Beta or Load Test," she said. Adding later, "Load experience in beta and load test is different than live. We've adapted and put out servers with changes, already seeing improvements."

Bradshaw also cited unexpectedly high demand on servers in an interview with Polygon this weekend. "What we underestimated was a huge surge in pre-orders within the last week and the power of the great word-of-mouth created by the media and our community," she told Polygon. "We test and work out the capacity load of each server in load testing and through our beta events. We have seen play behavior and load in areas that have stressed our game server [databases] in ways that we did not experience in Beta or Load Test."

Not all of the server capacity problems were directly related to the amount of hardware, either. "We've identified that many of our issues were related to how [SimCity's] GlassBox [engine] managed the vast amount of simulation data through its database," Bradshaw told Polygon. "We've addressed that and we've seen an 80 percent decrease in connectivity or responsiveness issues. Still, 80 percent is not good enough and so we are continuing to aggressively address this area."

Regarding refunds, Bradshaw restated on Twitter that EA does not give money back on downloadable games. She clarified that the previously announced free game download will offer players a choice of which title they would like. The company is also "considering other ways to make it up to you," according to Bradshaw. She stated once again that players are not being banned for simply requesting refunds.

Bradshaw went on to promise that features like Cheetah speed and Achievements would be coming back once server stability issues were totally "nailed." She said that the team would be "absolutely looking at" increasing maximum city sizes in the future as well.

138 Reader Comments

If ever there was a poster child for the "we always want you connected to our servers for no apparent reason" DRM schemes, SimCity would be it. At least with Diablo III they could make the argument of "most people will play it on Battle.net anyway" but there wasn't any such excuse for that here. If you always want gamers connected, publishers then you need to hold up your end of the deal and have enough servers to support the damn load!

And what kind of capitulation is "we'll look into putting an offline mode into a singleplayer game"? I mean, WTF?

I think you mean server response time has DECREASED 40 fold since launch. An increase in response time would be worse. [Edit - title said increased instead of improved when I first posted]

This is just another case of inflicting unwanted an un-neccessary DRM on customers mainly to prevent used game sales. This is primarily a single player game with good multiplayer features so "offline mode" should be the standard

"Maxis continues to make huge progress in addressing the lag and server-capacity issues we experienced at launch. We’ve improved our server response time by 40x, we’ve doubled the number of players in the game at the same time and reduced server down times. "

That's PR-flack for 'we launched a hugely-anticipated AAA title with our backend so badly underprovisioned that doubling capacity still leaves us below acceptable levels, and no that doesn't mean you get to ask for a refund." right?

They should've called it SimCity Online (since you connect multiple cities in a region run by other players) to begin with rather than misleading players into thinking it was just a single-player reboot.

Trying to be optimistic in that they realize a much larger percentage of the player base wants a single player experience will influence the next Sim City iteration such that the online aspects are optional. My cynical and pessimistic side says no, that will never fly, the status quo will win out again. In the next few months, what EA will have learned is that once the initial mess is over (which is manageable), the numbers prove that they make more money by keeping it online. END OF LINE

I think the functionality provided the always online (Regions) could have been sold better, it's a neat idea from the sounds of it, but unless people build their cities around it it's not going to work out in the long run

So, they MIGHT still let you pay this game after the servers are taken down "in a few years." Considering how timeless SimCity can be, those words are not good enough. This isn't some hapless shooter we're talking about. So far everything seems so ill-conceived that a series of patches might not get it over the hump.

In other words, EA used marketer babble speak to say one thing, and mean another. Looking into offline mode to earn our trust back, but then stating that offline mode is just not possible? The server issue makes more sense if you think of it in terms of overselling capacity to maximize profits. They didn't expect everyone to be always on, and assumed what they had in place was good enough.

DUH. You make a game where people can't have game saves or reloads, keep it always online, and wonder why they are always logged in? Having problems keeping up with server demand, and then saying it was the massive pre-orders that bungled it up is just pure bullshit. EA clearly made a piss poor call, and they are scrambling to fix it.

Should you send a letter, please send it with a tracking number and a green card attached. That way, someone has to sign for it, and it gets attention. Of course, it will cost you $5 bucks, but hey, you just blew $80 on the uber-deluxe edition that you couldn't play.

And, if you like in the United States, you can find out who your representatives is by going to http://votesmart.org/ . Because whining on a online forum is easy, but writing a one-page professional letter to your congresscritter takes time and effort and takes away from your game playing.

Personally, I have trouble spending $60-$80 on a new game. If I wait a few months to a year, the price usually drops dramatically. (Duke Nukem Whenever anyone?) And, right now, I'm busy making a living and having fun improving myself through Toastmasters and getting some certifications that I don't have time for games or watching television.

$25 USD to get a digital copy of the game, automatic participation in the BETA and get your name mentioned as a supporter (if you care about such a thing). I'd rather give my money to these guys, where I might get a good game close to the holidays, then give $60 to EA/Maxis for a FAILED concept of a game.

Half the expense to support something I really do want. That's an easy decision.

So with 15,000 dollars worth of servers...you FINALLY get it fixed? I realize that finding the issues takes time...but what did you have 3 servers for a GAME LAUNCH? Am I missing something or did they just really dumb it down by stating a rack of servers fixed most of the issues? If they did only have a hand full of servers...I would be sooo pissed because MILLIONS of dollars were spend likely developing, launching and spent by consumers....and it took less than 20,000 to fix it? WTF?

So with 15,000 dollars worth of servers...you FINALLY get it fixed? I realize that finding the issues takes time...but what did you have 3 servers for a GAME LAUNCH? Am I missing something or did they just really dumb it down by stating a rack of servers fixed most of the issues? If they did only have a hand full of servers...I would be sooo pissed because MILLIONS of dollars were spend likely developing, launching and spent by consumers....and it took less than 20,000 to fix it? WTF?

I think the functionality provided the always online (Regions) could have been sold better, it's a neat idea from the sounds of it, but unless people build their cities around it it's not going to work out in the long run

Calling it Sim Suburb might have worked better

What I find sort of baffling is why the 'regions' functions(while the do require online connectivity, unless a single player controls all cities in a region, or non-player cities are swapped out for a fairly modest abstracted economic simulation of their inputs and outputs(as seen in not a few games with some sort of 'economy' component with NPC trading partners) are bringing the servers to their knees...

Based on reports of how long a play session can continue with its connection to the mothership cut off(~20 minutes) and the relatively high acceptable latency of interactions between cities(cities can run at different game speeds, things like 'pollution level' or 'demand for jobs in city X from residents of city Y don't change much in less than a minute or two) you could practically shoehorn everything but the initial matchmaking process into the (I'm probably dating myself here; but so it goes) old play-by-email multiplayer model.

This isn't EVE Online, where they have to get 100% global state across the vast majority of the player base, relatively quickly, or even WoW, where NPCs and other PCs need to update often enough that they aren't just teleporting around like an FPS on 28.8 dialup...

That said, Bradshaw later tweeted "the game was designed for [multiplayer], we sim the entire region on the server, so [adding offline modes] is just not possible." Talk about muddying the message a little bit.

Regions, which are made up of how neighboring cities run by various players, are said to be simulated on the server. If player A runs her city at one simulation speed, and player B runs at another, how does the regional simulation reconcile the difference in speeds?

I think the functionality provided the always online (Regions) could have been sold better, it's a neat idea from the sounds of it, but unless people build their cities around it it's not going to work out in the long run

Calling it Sim Suburb might have worked better

What I find sort of baffling is why the 'regions' functions(while the do require online connectivity, unless a single player controls all cities in a region, or non-player cities are swapped out for a fairly modest abstracted economic simulation of their inputs and outputs(as seen in not a few games with some sort of 'economy' component with NPC trading partners) are bringing the servers to their knees...

From what I've read, they didn't actually stress test their servers under peak loads and the beta testing was laughable at best. I remember before GW2 went live they had multiple beta weekends, and multiple stress tests, sometimes with only a few hours notice.

So with 15,000 dollars worth of servers...you FINALLY get it fixed? I realize that finding the issues takes time...but what did you have 3 servers for a GAME LAUNCH? Am I missing something or did they just really dumb it down by stating a rack of servers fixed most of the issues? If they did only have a hand full of servers...I would be sooo pissed because MILLIONS of dollars were spend likely developing, launching and spent by consumers....and it took less than 20,000 to fix it? WTF?

Maybe I'm being excessively charitable; but I assume that '1 server' actually means '1 front-facing-user-visible-server-with-a-name, along with one or more DB servers, storage, message passing, etc, etc.' rather than '1 R720 in a rack somewhere'.

That said, I find it sort of mind-boggling, in this age of cheap virtualization and ubiquitous imaging tools and whatnot, that EA/Maxis didn't have a largely automated process for bringing up an entire 'server', no matter how many physical or virtual OS instances that actually meant. Automated deployment/answer files/imaging has been a thing in corporate/institutional IT for what at least two decades now? And now the cool 'cloud' kids have APIs that you can use to just magic entire VMs into existence, to your spec, in a matter of minutes.

At the rate they've been bringing them up, you'd think that they were hand-installing the OS from CDs and manually configuring all the details of each one.

...and it's still rubbish. Imagine how was it at launch, 40 times worse! What do they take money for these days... they may just as well open a failed game developer charity and say, here you give us 50$ and in exchange at least we do not frustrate you with pretending that we have a game you can play.

Bradshaw said that the company has "no intention of offlining SimCity any time soon, but we'll look into that as part of our earning back your trust efforts." That said, Bradshaw later tweeted "the game was designed for [multiplayer], we sim the entire region on the server, so [adding offline modes] is just not possible."

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.